You ask me why I live
alone in the mangrove forest,
at the edge of the infinite sea.
I smile, I am silent
until even my soul grows quiet:
it lives in the other world, 
one that no one owns.
The trees bloom. 
The waves keep coming.

Inspired by the poem ‘I Make My Home in the Mountains’ 
Li Po (701-762 )

Mangroves, just as seagrass beds and coral reefs, keep coastal zones healthy. Mangroves provide essential habitat for thousands of species. They also stabilize shorelines, preventing erosion and protecting the land — and the people who live there — from waves and storms.

But there are many threats to mangrove forests: sea level rise, tourism, land reclamation for agriculture, shrimp farms, pollution from fertilizers from agricultural areas and waste from cities, logging... just to name a few. 

The consequences are enormous. Not only because, like all trees, they hold a lot of CO2 both in their biomass and in the soil of the forests, which is released when the forests are destroyed, but also because they house very fragile ecosystems that are lost when the trees disappear.

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General info on this artwork

This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.

For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.

The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.

Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page and here.